Leon Trotsky

Leon Trotsky, originally named Lev Davididovich Bronstein, was born in Yanovka, Ukraine. He attended Jewish primary school, but he was expelled because he had a disagreement with a French teacher. He was an avid believer of Marxist theories in his youth. In 1896 he joined the Social Democrat party and 2 years after he was arrested as a Marxist and exiled into Serbia. He later escaped Serbia with a forged passport and went into England. There he met Lenin. They collaborated with other believers and created Iskra (The Spark). After Lenin and Trotsky split Trotsky became the leader of the Mensheviks. Opposite of the Lenin-lead Bolsheviks, Trotsky said that the ideas of Lenin would end in a one man dictatorship. In 1905 he organized the first revolutionary Soviet council in St.Petersburg and was then appointed as president of the Soviet. But after his uprising ended he was, once again, exiled to Serbia.

He the found work in Vienna as a journalist where he was an editor for Pravada. But once World War 1 broke out he was moving around and got arrested in Germany for opposing the war. He was publicly against Russia's involvement in the war. After he was released he moved to Paris where he was an editor for Nashe Slovo, a weekly socialist paper. But he got kicked out of France because, again, he was against the war. He returned to Russia in 1917 where he joined the Bolsheviks. This was because he did not approve of the support that the Mensheviks were giving to the Provisional Government. He was then arrested numerous times but after he was released he played a big part in organizing the October Revolution, this helped the Bolsheviks come into power. In November Lenin appointed Trotsky as the Commissioner of Foreign Affairs. He was given the task of getting Russia out of the World War without having to give up any territory to the Central Powers. In 1918 during the conference of Brest-Litovsk he was the leader of the Russian delegate. He was then made the Russian Civil War commissioner. He lived in a train for 2 and a half years where he traveled from war front to war front gathering supporters. In Mexico City on August 20, 1940 Ramon Mercader was given orders by Stalin to assassinate Trotsky. He was attacked in his home and assaulted with a pickaxe. He died after the weapon fractured his skull.